The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America (2015)
âThe Sisters Are Alright exposes antiâblack-woman propaganda and shows how real black women are pushing back against distorted cartoon versions of themselves.
When African women arrived on American shores, the three-headed hydraâservile Mammy, angry Sapphire, and lascivious Jezebelâfollowed close behind. In the â60s, the Matriarch, the willfully unmarried baby machine leeching off the state, joined them. These stereotypes persist to this day through newspaper headlines, Sunday sermons, social media memes, cable punditry, government policies, and hit song lyrics. Emancipation may have happened more than 150 years ago, but America still wonât let a sister be free from this coven of caricatures.
Tamara Winfrey Harris delves into marriage, motherhood, health, sexuality, beauty, and more, taking sharp aim at pervasive stereotypes about black women. She counters warped prejudices with the straight-up truth about being a black woman in America. âWe have facets like diamonds,â she writes. âThe trouble is the people who refuse to see us sparkling.â â
by Tamara Winfrey Harris
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Tamara Winfrey Harris is a writer who specializes in the ever-evolving space where current events, politics, and pop culture intersect with race and gender. Her first book is The Sisters are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative for Black Women in America (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Summer 2015). âFor black women,â Tamara explains, âthe most radical thing we can do is to throw off the shackles forged by [stereotypes] and regain our full and complex humanity. [This] is a revolutionary act in the face of a society eager to mold us into hard, unbreakable things.âÂ
Tamaraâs writing career began with the personal blog, What Tami Said. Her work there has been referenced by New York magazine and a host of sites dedicated to feminism and race. An article from the blog post, âNappy Love: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Kinksâ was published by Oxford University Press (2014) in How Writing Works: 1st edition with Readings. Tamara was also a senior editor at Racialicious, a blog that explores the intersection of race and pop culture.
A Midwesterner at heart, Tamara is a native of Indiana. She graduated with a BA degree from the Greenlee School of Journalism at Iowa State University. She is also a graduate of the Maynard Instituteâs Editing Program for Minority Journalists. With more than 20 years of experience in journalism, public relations and marketing, Tamara also teaches public speaking classes to college students.
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